Event Description

Celebrating and remembering the life of Christopher Hitchens on the date of his birth, April 13th. Let's lift a glass of Johnnie Walker Black, with a splash of Perrier, to the Bard of Atheism. If you smoke, a standard cigarette will do but a fine Cuban Cigar would be a tribute.

If you don't drink or smoke - just pick another vice! Do you enjoy ice cream? Select a fine haagen dazs and knock yourself out. Don't want to take in too many calories? Run a hot bubble bath and play your favorite music a bit louder than you would normally think prudent. :D

I am not sure what form my "attending" will take but I will figure it out by then. At the very least I will be especially unapologetic about my atheism on that day. I don't drink alcohol or smoke anything, but I will raise a mental toast to him.

Hitchens' run-ins with the law have not been restricted to Sparta city limits. In May 2002, he was arrested for drunkenly singing 1930s union songs while driving a stolen riding lawnmower through the streets of Boston, where he was attending an international women's-rights conference. Hitchens accused police of "atavistic, morally reprehensible Stalinist scare tactics" before being bailed out by conference organizers the following morning.

Sgt. Ed Poole of Boston's 11th Precinct said there was no love lost between Hitchens and his arresting officers.

"Word got around the station that this guy wrote a whole book claiming that Mother Teresa was a stooge of right-wing dictators," Poole recalled. "Supposedly, he said her hypocritical approach to charity for the poor of Calcutta, as well as her steadfast advocacy of the Catholic Church's doctrine prohibiting birth control, made her an essentially immoral individual undeserving of the mantle of sainthood. Well, a lot of the boys here are Irish-Catholic born and raised, and they don't take too kindly to people speaking ill of nuns."